Russell Thaw

Thaw with his mother, aged 3

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1910, Thaw was the only known child of Evelyn Nesbit, a famous American model and actress, and, legally, her first husband Harry Kendall Thaw. The senior Thaw was wealthy, with a long history of mental instability. He had shot and killed architect Stanford White, a former lover of Nesbit, at Madison Square Garden in 1906 in front of hundreds of witnesses. In 1908 Harry Thaw was acquitted of murder based on reason of insanity, but he spent years in mental institutions, where Nesbit visited him.

Russell Thaw was treated indifferently by Harry Thaw and his family, who never accepted the boy as his biological son. Russell was born four years into a period of about seven years, following his father's killing of White, when Harry Kendall Thaw was largely confined to jails and mental institutions. Nesbit had testified that Russell had been conceived by Harry Thaw during her conjugal visits to her husband at the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. There Harry Thaw had been given extensive visitation privileges, freedom of movement, and privacy. Nesbit said that those who saw the boy believed that Harry Thaw was his father by the resemblance between them. But, she eventually gave up trying to prove Thaw's paternity. Nesbit said of the matter, "A working girl could not fight the Thaw millions."[1]

Nesbit and Harry Kendall Thaw divorced in 1915, after she had moved to California with Russell. She married again in 1916, to Jack Clifford.

As a child, Thaw appeared with his mother in at least six films of the silent film era: Threads of Destiny (1914), Redemption (1917), Her Mistake (1918), The Woman Who Gave (1918), I Want to Forget (1918), and The Hidden Woman (1922). However, all copies of these films have since been lost.

As a young man Thaw was attracted to flying and became certified as a pilot. He worked as the chief pilot for the Guggenheim family and participated in air races and adventure excursions under their sponsorship.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Thaw participated in two cross-country Bendix trophy races. These were instituted in 1931 and held annually to promote and encourage the achievements of U.S. aviation. Flying the Gee Bee Model R-2 with a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, he withdrew from the 1933 race.[11] Flying a Northrop Gamma with a Wright Cyclone engine, he came in third in the 1935 race from Los Angeles to Cleveland, ahead of Amelia Earhart in fifth place.

On December 10, 1935, Thaw crashed in Atlanta, Georgia, after leaving from Caldwell, New Jersey, during a planned flight to rescue the polar explorer Lincoln Ellsworth.[12]

He also served as a pilot in the US Army Air Force during World War II.

Thaw worked as a test pilot for the Douglas Aircraft Company. He flew the Douglas F3D Skyknight, the Douglas XB-43 Jetmaster, and the XF4D-1 Skyray. He was the first person to fly the Douglas XF3D-1 (on March 23, 1948, at Douglas's El Segundo facility in California).[13]

On July 17, 1936, Thaw married Katherine Emily Roberts, a Beverly Hills debutante who was also a graduate of Radcliffe College.[14] They settled in White Plains, New York. They separated on March 15, 1939. Katherine Thaw sued her husband for cruelty and "refusal to live with her".[15] They divorced effective July 8, 1941. Katherine Thaw said that her husband had left her because he said he could not support them both.[16][17]

Thaw married again in 1943. He had three children with his second wife: sons Michael William and Russell Hall Thaw, and a daughter, Theresa Nesbit Thaw. Thaw died in Santa Barbara, California, on May 6, 1984.

• Burnett, Claudine (2009). Murderous Intent?: Long Beach, CA: 1880s–1920. AuthorHouse. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-438-94044-1.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Russell Thaw.

• Russell Thaw at IMDb 
• The Love Triangle at pbs.org